Beverly Garland

When Beverly was four, the family moved south to Glendale, California and in 1931 she made her acting debut playing Cupid in a kindergarten play.

Mother Amelia 'Milly' Scherer was of German descent and was a cosmetician; her father James was a crooner who thrived on one-night stands until the demands of marriage and family moved him into sales work. He later was killed in an auto accident in 1961 in Riverside, California.

In the film The Mad Room (1969), Beverly's character in the film was pregnant and so was she at the time of filming (with her son, Jim).

In the early 1970s, with husband Fillmore Crank, she opened the Beverly Garland's Howard Johnson's Resort Lodge, a 154-room hotel near Universal Studios.

Starting with "Remington Steele" (1982), she played mothers of three television women with hazardous lives; from the aforementioned show, Laura Holt (Stephanie Zimbalist), Amanda King (Kate Jackson) of "Scarecrow and Mrs. King" (1983) & Lois Lane (Teri Hatcher) of "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman" (1993).

Interviewed in "Interviews with B Science Fiction and Horror Movie Makers: Writers, Producers, Directors, Actors, Moguls and Makeup" by Tom Weaver (McFarland 1988).